Robert Gibbs

“ I was asked yesterday about AIG. As you know, Treasury and others are beginning the process of trying to find out exactly the health of banks given different economic scenarios. The President and his team have developed and passed through Congress a comprehensive recovery plan that is beginning. Tax cuts will start showing up in people's pay checks in April.
Again, if you want to take just your time line of three weeks or three and a half weeks, I don't think the American -- I think the American people understand we didn't get into this problem in the beginning of February. ”

“ As I said yesterday, the President believes health care reform that lessens the cost for families and small businesses, improves outcomes in quality, and provides additional access to millions that don't currently have health insurance is long overdue for the American people. ”

“ I think we've certainly seen that if we don't have some baseline of banking and financial regulations, that, because money can be transferred around the world so quickly, it's important to have a baseline financial understanding of what can and can't happen. Obviously many of the things that -- many of the challenges that we face are challenges that they are -- many of the European countries face. ”

“ Only a sustained effort to do any number of different things is going to be what finally gets the economy moving again.
The President has spoken and spoke today about this notion that we have to -- it's going to be hard for a recovery to happen if we aren't seeing a change in lending. ”

“ I'm going to get in a lot of trouble if I continue with -- the President -- again, if you turn on a certain program it's geared to a very small audience -- no offense to my good friends or friend at CNBC. But the President has to look out for the broader economy and for the broader population, some of -- many of whom are investors, but not exclusively investors. He's taking steps to reregulate our economy so that what happened on Wall Street doesn't happen again ”

“ Again, some people watch and comment on the day-to-day; the President is much more focused on how to move this economy along for the long term, and not just for those that work on Wall Street, but for those that have investments and live on Main Street. [reporter] : But I think the broader context or concern that he was expressing is the President may be losing the confidence of some investors, if not Wall Street -- Main Street investors who are fleeing the markets and -- as reflected by what's happening in the markets. ”

“ But again, there's -- the economy faces many challenges, and the President and the administration are working day and night to address the many challenges that have gotten us to this point, and the many steps that we have to take over the course of the next many months to turn the economy around. ”

“ But, look, some people are on TV every day to comment on the tracking poll, the ups and the downs. There are other people that were elected to try to fix the problem and try to reinstitute an economy that works for everyone. ”

“ The process with the White House will begin here Thursday with many stakeholders coming to discuss the future of health care reform and how we can get there, and bringing together people that have not always agreed on this issue -- but without getting into certain legislative timetables that somebody like Senator Baucus might set, only to say that the President believes that reform is long overdue. ”

“ An approach that's open, an approach that has many that agree on an overall goal, but have to work out specifics, I think is important for the President to -- I think it's important for the President to demonstrate that he's open and willing to hear what people have to say as they talk through a complicated issue. ”

“ We got into this problem based on the trend of many years -- whether it's ignoring the investments that we needed to make that are now taking up a lot of the budgets of families or businesses or even the government, or if we've made regulatory decisions that allowed some people to act in an irresponsible way that many of us are paying for now -- those trends are something that we have to change. ”

“ They're all part of the broader issue because, again, as I've said many times from up here, there isn't just one thing that we have to do. There isn't just -- if just passing an $800 billion recovery plan would get the economy going again, I'm sure that would be received quite well here. ”

“ I do believe that he -- that the President believes, I think as many do, that steps have to be taken in order to work collectively to get the world economy moving again; that we have to take steps to ensure that the regulation of our economy is done in a way that find markedly different rules across the continuum ”

“ No, I think it just bears repeating, as people wonder whether one thing alone is going to -- one thing and one thing alone on one given day is going to change many years of what got us to this point. I think that just bears repeating often. Again, I think that's -- I think that's where the American people are. ”

“ This is, as you can read from the packet I'm sure you got from Treasury -- it's complicated -- probably why it has that fancy name -- but the goal is quite simple, and that is to provide for small businesses and for consumers that need access to that capital in order to create jobs, in order to borrow money to buy a car, send a child to college, access to that capital, because many of those markets right now are seized up or frozen. ”

“ But again, I don't -- is this one thing alone going to unclog once and for all a system that poses many challenges for us? Probably not. But again, it's one more step in order to provide that solution, to free up lending and capital for people that can't get access to it but want to create jobs, and will help get the economy moving again. I'll work on that whole TALF deal. Yes, sir. [reporter] : Robert, I'm Tom Costello with NBC. This morning Jim Cramer made a note of saying that he thought -- by the way, he's not a conservative. ”

“ Well, again, I think it would be -- I think it's important that leading up to Thursday we ask people from a wide spectrum, representing many viewpoints -- business and labor, providers, insurance companies, patients, doctors, Democrats, Republicans -- that we ask everybody to come and talk openly and freely about those ideas. ”